Night-Train

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Finally, the time grew short before his next class, and Lane Carter regretfully called an end to the interview, volunteering to provide additional information if she felt it was necessary.

  “I don’t know if I can even use half of all the things you’ve told me, Dr. Carter,” Lya said. “But I was serious about mounting a search for Train 93. Is it all right if I call you after I’ve talked to Lieutenant Corvino?”

  “Certainly.” Lane Carter stood up and bowed gracefully, took her hand, and kissed it in the European style. “I look forward to seeing you again, and I do hope I have been of some interest, entertainment, and perhaps enlightenment.”

  Lya smiled graciously. “Oh, yes, Dr. Carter, you were wonderful, and I thank you very much. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, and tell young Michael I said hello, would you? He’s a good man, that Detective Corvino.”

  Nodding, Lya closed the door to the office and walked down the gloomy hallway, her mind overloaded with the stories and images related by Dr. Lane Carter. She checked her watch and saw that it was getting late. She would have to eat lunch quickly and get to the studio for an afternoon taping.

  As she reached the street, she considered taking the subway uptown, but something made her pause. No, she rationalized, she was late and a cab might be quicker. Moving to the curb, she hailed a small yellow sedan and directed the cabbie to go to 66th Street off Central Park West.

  As the cab pulled into the northbound stream of traffic, Lya began to review all that she had learned from Dr. Carter, tying it in with the previous information she’d gleaned from Mr. Frieter and the public library. She had the makings of a fascinating story already. But Lya wanted more … simply because there seemed to be more, just waiting to be uncovered.

  She knew that she didn’t really need Michael Corvino’s help, but it might come in handy if things got sticky, if any public officials started dragging their feet. Besides, her current research was a good excuse to make contact with him again. She smiled to herself at the thought. Yes, I’d like to make contact with him all right … a lot more contact!

  The cab worked its way up Sixth Avenue, and Lya looked out her window at the impossibly thick crowds on the sidewalks. Manhattan was such a vibrant place, still the center of what was really happening. Every once in a while, it would hit home that she was actually a part of this exciting city, actually had her fingers on its great pulse. And that’s when she would think that she was a lot like those silly cigarette commercials—she had come a long way, damn it.

  She used to feel embarrassed when she thought about her past, but that was behind her. She’d grown up in a small Maryland town, graduated from high school with no appreciable skills, and married the star pitcher on the school team. She had been raised to think that it was a woman’s duty to get married and start keeping house, get pregnant, and keep out of men’s affairs. That had been her mother’s way, and her father had always reinforced that view. (Dad, I love you, but you were an asshole most of the time … )

  Lya’s husband was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles, and he was sent to Bluefield, West Virginia, to play in the rookie league. Lya, at eighteen, accompanied him and lived in a squalid trailer park near the town’s playing field. She lasted one and a half seasons’ worth of laundry, TV dinners, and daytime soap operas before everything fell apart. Her husband was getting his ears pinned back on the mound by sizzling line drives, and his career as a ballplayer was not going to last unless he mastered the curve ball. He took his frustrations out on Lya, making her life as miserable as his.

  When she left him, she didn’t look back. Returning to Maryland, she enrolled in college, studied journalism and television, and went out to look for work. It was a question of being in the right place at the right time, plus the fact that she was female and attractive. It was the early seventies and the women’s movement was just hitting its stride. The broadcasting industry was falling all over itself to get females and blacks on the air, and Lya landed her first job reading the news at a small radio station in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She gradually climbed from one position to another until a TV station in New Haven hired her as the “weather girl.” She spent only a year there before WABC-TV noticed her and offered her a spot in Manhattan.

  Yeah, she thought, I’m here all right, and I’m here to stay. She knew that people in the studio felt that she had “rising star” potential, and she wasn’t going to do anything to dissuade that kind of thinking. This story’s going to blow their doors off, she thought, using one of her producer’s favorite phrases.

  The cab moved deftly through the traffic, past the jewelry district, then up past some of the nicer hotels and “Network Row” to the southern edge of the Park. The traffic here was a snarling mess; everyone seemed to want to be in a lane other than his own. The cabbie worked his way toward Central Park West, frequently glancing in the mirror and finally getting up the nerve to tell Lya that he watched her on the news every chance he got. She smiled and thanked him.

  Finally reaching the studio, she paid the cabbie, entered the unimposing group of buildings, and went upstairs to her desk. There was the usual stack of memoranda and pages of teletype, but nothing urgent. She dialed Theresa Corvino’s line and acquired her brother’s phone numbers, both at work and at home.

  Time to get to work, she thought, smiling. She decided to try his home number rather than bothering him at work. At the second ring, it was picked up, but it turned out to be an answering machine. She left a message and went out to get something for lunch.

  About forty-five minutes later when she was back at her desk, the phone rang.

  “Lya Marsden.”

  “Lya? It’s Michael Corvino. I got your message. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Yes, there is,” she said and told him briefly of her interviews and research and her meeting with Lane Carter. She ended it all with a request for help.

  “Frankly, I’m very surprised,” he said. “And intrigued … and disappointed. If you can be all three at the same time.”

  “I don’t understand.” Lya couldn’t tell from the tone of Michael’s voice whether he was being serious.

  “Well, to explain: I’m surprised at how much information you’ve been able to uncover, and it’s all very interesting stuff; but I’m a bit disappointed that you didn’t call me just to say hello, if you know what I mean.”

  Lya knew exactly what he meant. She wanted to tell him that requesting help was not the only reason she had called, and that she did want to see him, and that she was very much attracted to him, but she could not bring herself to say any of it. After a long pause, all she managed to say was, “Oh, I see …”

  Michael refused to let the conversation reach the awkward stage, however, and forged ahead. “But that’s not going to deter me, Lya. Now that I have you on the phone, and a fairly good pretext to see you, why don’t we have dinner tonight and talk over our plans?”

  Before she could consider the implications, she heard herself saying yes.

  “Great. Shall I stop by to pick you up, or would you prefer to meet me?”

  “Oh, no, you can pick me up.” She said it quickly, impulsively, and gave Michael the address.

  “Okay. Is eight o’clock too late?”

  “No. No, that will be fine.” Lya felt her heart beating a bit more quickly; she was shocked that she was reacting so obviously to this man. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “That’s great,” said Michael. “I wasn’t really in the mood for another chicken potpie. See you soon.”

  “Good-bye, Michael.”

  “Bye, Lya.”

  And he was gone. The conversation had seemed quick and effortless on his part, and she could detect the excitement in his voice. So why did she feel trepidation? Isn’t this what you wanted, at least on some level? she chided herself.

  Yes, she thought as she got up from her desk at the studio, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be scared anyway.

  CHAPTER 13


  PEAKE

  He was out again. Out in the cold, windy darkness, and the night seemed to be swirling around him like brittle leaves. Sensory impressions of the city lay scattered in his mind, just barely perceived. The grinding of a truck’s gears, flashing lights from cabs, the smells of a corner vendor’s chestnuts and soft pretzels, the smooth, hard feel of the Cutco knife in his hand beneath his overcoat.

  (Where the hell am I?)

  Stopping in mid-stride, Melvin W. Peake looked cautiously around him. He was standing in the middle of a block in a residential section of the city. Behind him was the fluorescent front of a deli, where smoked fish eyed him fixedly through the glass. Up the block was an alfresco restaurant, its terrace glassed in for the coming winter, and through the barrier Melvin could see couples dining by candlelight. Someone passed him, bumping his shoulder, moving the knife against his leg so that he could feel its sharp point through his trousers.

  (Just keep moving.)

  He walked to the corner and saw that he was at the intersection of 77th Street and Third Avenue. One more block and he could go underground again. He crossed at the light and headed west, not even wondering about the circumstances that had brought him to this point and time in the city. His lapses were becoming so frequent now that he had stopped worrying about them, had been unable to worry about them, because the lapses were becoming his normal functioning state. Reality had become little more than a splash of color and sound that assumed meaning only when he stopped to really concentrate on what was going on around him.

  (Got to get down there. Got to find him again. He’s out there and I’ve got to find him.)

  He walked the block on 77th Street slowly, surreptitiously studying everyone who passed him from the opposite direction, past the brownstones and the basement shops to the corner of Lexington, where he crossed and took the stairs to the downtown trains. As he ambled down the steps and thrust two dollars under the token-seller’s grid, he forced himself to concentrate on getting his change and the tokens from the little, worn-smooth, wooden tray beneath the window. Turning, he jammed a token into the slot of the turnstile and pushed through, careful not to let the rotating arms of the stile hit his knife-arm.

  As he descended to the platform, scanning it to see who accompanied him in his wait for the train—two young women, a fashionably dressed man carrying a briefcase, and a rather scruffy-looking older fellow wearing lots of leather and denim—he felt a kind of calm envelop him.

  Melvin Peake felt good down in the tunnels. The air seemed somehow cleaner to him, warmer and more comforting. He felt more alive and filled with purpose. He knew that there was a force at work under the streets, a force or a presence that seemed to infuse him with vigor and strength. Looking at the others on the platform, he felt a sense of power over them, a superiority he’d never known until now. The two young women were the kind he had always lusted after when he had been in school, and they were also the kind who would never give him the time of day, much less a date. Oh, but they would do anything he wanted now, wouldn’t they? All he had to do was flash his Cutco knife at them, and they would do anything. And the young guy with the briefcase: just the kind of fancy fart Peake hated, just the kind of guy he had always wanted to look like and knew that he never would. But it didn’t matter anymore. Now Melvin Peake was a big man—somebody that everyone knew about, that everyone feared.

  (Fuck ‘em. Fuck all of them. I’m in charge down here, and nobody can do a damn thing about it.)

  The train was coming, and Peake could feel its subsonic rumble in the concrete. It blasted into the station wrapped in noise and ugly graffiti and slammed to a halt, its doors opening eerily as though by an unseen hand. Everyone entered the train, Melvin Peake last of all.

  He stood by the chrome pole in front of the doors and surveyed the dingy interior of the car like a lord looking over his kingdom. There was power down here, and he could feel it growing in his mind. All the years that he had been cowed by fear of the man who called himself Father were gone now, and Melvin Peake knew that he had the strength to face his father and cut him down, no matter how many times he might spring up from the dead to haunt him.

  The doors closed and the train moved away from the pale lights of the station, heading south toward the Battery. Peake sat down and gazed about at the other faces, smiling as he occasionally glanced at his birdlike features in the window glass opposite his seat. There were fewer passengers in the evening hours, and that made it easier for him to find his father and kill him once again. He fingered the smooth handle of the knife, and it seemed to grow warm to his touch. Like a magic sword when it was wielded by the right person.

  (I’m the right person all right. Goddamn right I am.)

  The people in the car did not interest him, now that he was sure his father was not among them, and Peake turned in his seat and looked into the darkness of the tunnel, cupping his hands to the glass to cut the glare. At first there was nothing but an occasional flash of light, indicating motion, but he forced his eyes to adjust to the absence of light, the distraction of the moving car. He was looking for something out there, but he didn’t know what it was, or even why he was doing it.

  (Something out there. You can feel it, can’t you? Something riding the train with you.)

  Straining, almost pressing his face against the glass, he looked for that something. And almost as if he had willed it into existence, he saw something just below the edge of the window. Something white and slimy-skinned. Its shape was indistinct, bloblike, and its milky skin quivered like jelly from the constant sway of the subway car. Peake watched it as though studying a specimen under a microscope. It was moving. Upward, onto the glass.

  He could see the fine details of its underside now. Small prickly circles like the suckers of an octopus, only as Peake studied them he could see that each of the little suckers was an open mouth with tiny double rings of teeth. The mouths opened and closed, the teeth drawing close and then apart. The flesh of the thing was almost transparent and he could see delicate traceries of veins and arteries pumping fluid through its shapeless form.

  Oddly, he was not repelled by the sight of the thing. Indeed, it was the embodiment of all the nightmare visions of what must truly live in the world of darkness. Eyeless and pale. Never touched by the burning light of the sun. Slow and deliberate. Hungry. It was a thing that was certainly not out of place beneath the filthy city.

  And there was more than one of them. As the first one cleared the edge of the window, attaching itself hungrily to the glass, inching and sliming its way toward the roof, Peake saw others. Ten more. Twenty more. He could not count them all. They were at all the windows, moving on the glass, leaving silvery trails of slime in their wakes.

  (Look at them! God, it’s incredible!)

  And yet no one else seemed to notice the things as they swarmed over the exterior of the car. It was as if Melvin Peake were the only one who could really see them.

  (That’s right. You are the only one. You’re special.)

  Suddenly the train was slowing down, pulling into the 68th Street station. Several passengers stood up, anticipating the stop, moving past Melvin to the doors. He looked away from the windows and the slithering things, fascinated that no one else noticed them. He allowed himself to smile, showing his tiny, even little teeth. Glancing back at the windows as the train stopped, he was mildly surprised to see the white, glistening things dropping away from the car, falling into the darkness of the tunnel. He cupped his hands to the glass and watched them, hordes of them, humping away from the train and dissolving into unseen crevices of deeper darkness.

  The doors to the train opened and a few people departed, to be replaced by several others. As Peake turned around to study the new passengers, his heart jumped as he saw his father come into the car.

  (It’s him! It’s him! Oh, Christ, it’s him!)

  His hand tightened reflexively around the handle of the knife and he had to control a strong impulse to leap up and st
art slashing at the man immediately.

  (No, that’s stupid. You are smart and you will not do that. Just watch him. Follow him until he is alone … and then you’ll get him.)

  Peake smiled, listening to the voice in his head and watching the man in the khaki work pants, the tan poplin jacket, and the rumpled hat move past him, take a seat across the aisle. The man was lanky and unshaven—a ten-o’clock shadow, thought Peake, again smiling at how clever he could be. The man was also totally oblivious to Peake, and seemed to be settling down to get some sleep as the subway rattled along toward the southern end of the island.

  The train began to slow again. Peake was surprised to see the tall, slim man stir from his daze and stand up. So short a ride? How strange, thought Peake, and he had wanted to watch him awhile longer.

  The train eased to a stop at the 59th Street station and its doors swished open. As the man stepped off onto the platform, Peake jumped up from his seat and followed him. Only an old woman had accompanied him and his prey off the train, and she was walking briskly toward the stairs that would take her up to the lights and the cool autumn air. Peake’s man, however, seemed content to take his time. He paused, leaning over as he reached into his pocket, then straightened up to light a cigarette. For an instant, he turned his back completely on Peake.

  In one smooth, practiced motion, Peake swung his arm out from beneath the folds of his topcoat, pointing the tip of the blade at the man’s back. With two quick steps, he lunged forward with his full weight behind the force of the blow, and he could feel the fabric of the man’s jacket, the muscled flesh of his lower back, resist and then yield to the puncture. He slammed full force into the victim, feeling the knife slip into his body, ravaging the right kidney.

  As though touched by an electric shock, the man’s body straightened and became rigid for an instant. From experience, Peake knew this was the time to strike again, and he quickly withdrew the blade and plunged it into the man’s side, pulling it sideways to pulpy resistance. The man was screaming now, futilely trying to turn and fight. Like a dancer, Peake wheeled away from his partner in death, waiting for the thin man to face him so that he could cut his throat.